I'd pretend to cut off an ear, for the girl I made up and loved in my mind. ( Or cut off for real a pretend ear if it please you.)

Some people say I went mad in May,
but I am sure it's been longer than that.
 
Next came the free advice;
peanut gallery, and all that.


Everybody kept saying,
'Let her go'
'you need to get over her'
 I would nod
say 'Yeah sure'
'you're right'.


I didn't,

didn't even want to,
blew two different
chances with two
completely wonderful
women probably
still wondering-

still shaking their pretty heads .

The first would do things
for me in bed,
amazing things, not for
the first time but
in new and phenomenal ways.

The second was an L.A. gal
who'd grown up in the biz;
had done t.v., knew Johnny Depp
and Slash's accountant,
said she loved me in other lives
and
offered me a book deal.


I just couldn't focus
on those things yet,
this was some sad poet
stuff for real and I was
Nine Thousand poems
in the hole.


Truth is a girl like her
deserves some coo coo ca choo.


A girl like her-

once in a lifetime-

she needed to see
how crazy in love she
had made me,
I owed her that much,
the way she made me feel.
The things I wrote.


She had given me
back forfeited passion
it seemed only fair
that I stand in white T-shirted
downpours crying out
her name in the hope
of love's resurrection
fashioned from audible anguish.


A muse like that,
you've got to write the sad ones too.


Love poems can't compare.

My ears long deaf and heart hardened
against those who advise 'get past her',
I think to myself-
not while the words still come.


Not now or anytime soon.


A girl like that deserves some crazy poet shit
to think about
for the rest of her life
when every real thing has lost it's groove.

Black Birds

My thoughts
are black birds
with blue
oil-sheen
wings
and mocking
cries.

They split
open my head,
and fly
en mass, out
into the
world.

A nuisance.

They crowd
tight-line wires
of communication,
and jeer at me
and everyone
who passes
beneath.

Flocks
of malevolence
twisting
reality -

flocking up
my life.

Soaring untethered
from limb
to horizon
to darker places

spreading sickness
and dis-ease.

Flocking black
bird thoughts,
screeching
and shitting on
every shiny thing.